(Original post by Hermione_moo)
No its not, your including state pensions and war pensions/payouts etc in the figure. According to the official stats provided in the Guardian newspaper, the actual cost of supporting people of working age who claim benefits (JSA, DLA, CTC etc) is only £15 billion a year.

The cost of benefits is hugely more than £15 billion a year. Even housing benefit alone amounts to far more than that.

Tax avoidance doesn't cost anyone anything - indeed, how you think you can even quantify it is beyond me. Are you including, to use a current example, people buying pasties from Gregg's? If I change my habits to avoid paying tax then I am not due to pay any tax - should that avenue have been unavailable to me, it is impossible to predict how I would have acted in a given situation.

What you are, in fact, calling for is the biggest tax hike in British history.

(Original post by Quady)
What sovereign powers were given away? The Lisbon Treaty did very little, Its Maastricht that has give away most - ie eg free labour movement within the EU.

Well the banks fell before the housing bubble popped, but true enough.

Well their biggest 'mistake' was allowing 600,000 Poles to enter the UK without any safeguards. When Maastricht was signed the EEC was comprised of only 12 mostly wealthy nations so free movement of people wasn't much of a problem. In the run up to the 2004 round of enlargement while other countries such as Germany saw the danger and negotiated restrictions Labour in all their wisdom sat on their hands and guessed that only ~15,000 workers from the new member states would turn up.

It's not a transfer of powers per se, but it's indicative of their lack of common sense when it comes to the EU.

is March 2012 Labour Force Survey, showing job vacancies, claimants and how many claimants there are per vacancy. Have a look.

The problem with that sort of logic is that the number of jobs is not static. If we can do a better job of filling vacancies and increasing economic activity, it is certainly feasible that the number of positions will increase overall. We are after all a service economy

Housing benefit is an interesting one. Because of the shortage of council housing, due to Thatcher's right to buy policies, much more housing benefit goes to private landlords. So instead of housing benefit being paid by one arm of the state and going to another arm of the state, we have housing benefit (tax money, remember), going into private pockets. This is an example of how social costs end up as private profits. That's worth getting angry about.

(Original post by Jivi)
This is not true White Collar crime costs the country WAY more then blue collar crime. For example benefit fraud costs the economy 500 million a year whilst tax fraud costs 5000 million a year.

So we are splitting 60million+ people into two catagories? In that case, the vast, vast majority of people are white collar ....

(Original post by L i b)
The problem with that sort of logic is that the number of jobs is not static. If we can do a better job of filling vacancies and increasing economic activity, it is certainly feasible that the number of positions will increase overall. We are after all a service economy

(Original post by JollyGreenAtheist)
Funny how people can be unified under the banner of attacking the vulnerable sections of society, but the abuses in the upper echelons of society like tax evasion and bankers bonuses goes unnoticed and tacitly accepted.

(Original post by billydisco)
The title says it all really. I strongly believe this culture of giving people something for nothing is slowly eradicating the purpose of going to work and earning your money.

There will be lots of looney-lefties saying "its not everyone"- but i'm not just referring to benefit claimants, but this whole culture of getting an easy ride (getting a career by winning x-factor, rather than studying hard at school etc).

Ridiculous. Most sane people know that success dosen't actually come from winning the xfactor/lottery. But they also are aware that school isn't a pre-requisite for success either, especially if you happen to be poor, and come from an ill educated family.

Many young people wouldn't consider a career as a nurse, doctor, teacher, engineer- they would rather be popstars as it's easier and earns plenty more money.

Wrong again. Many people would like to be doctors, nurses, lawyers and professionals. Sure, some might want to be popstars and footballers- and if thats their dream then fine. Most young people know what it takes to be successful.

Back to benefit claimants and, by this, I mean your family who are having children WHILST out of work and receiving even more money- we should be stopping this completely. The child will suffer? Yes- but the child is going to suffer whatever way (Unless we took it away from the family and gave it to a more responsible family).

Ok, this is one of the silliest arguments ever. the welfare money is used to maintain the health of the child, which serves a moral argument. First, that the child has a right to live his or her life to its maximum and therefore should have a right to basic food, health and care, and second, that children should not be held accountable for the poor decisions of their parents. So if you are willing to use children as pawns to play games of class warfare, i feel very sorry for you.

This cycle will never end until we put our foot down and make a stance. It will get worse and worse, crime will get worse, social attitudes will get worse and middle/upper class families will begin to emigrate (i am talking decades).

Middle and upper class families won't emigrate in the long run. we can see in societies where poorer people live in more urban settings that while their presence does drive out the middle class, the middle class simply settle in expensive places that price out the poor. Further, if you are advocating that letting people rot is helping them in the long run, you also have some serious issues. That type of poverty actually leads to more crime and more class warfare.

Labour are one of the biggest problems with this country. They represent "ordinary", "unfortunate" (with disabled people aside, these two adjectives can be replaced with "lazy") and try to paint any non-Labour supporter as a fox-hunting aristocrat. Yet, you, advocating an effective partition and removal of the poor in favour of middle and upper class families promotes the idea of nice, happy unity?

Whilst there is a tiny % of the population who do think all "plebs" should be hung, most right-wing conservatives are moderate, people who simply wish everybody to work hard and receive their just rewards.

they also tend to be daily mail reading armchair warriors, who envision a working society without understanding the realities of being poor, living on a council estate, going to a **** school and then the stuff that comes with it. They have an attitude of 'get on your bike' when the reality is that the world now is nothing like this- in fact, the system we live in tends to undermine the poorest in society more than in any other time in history. How can you get rewards when you have unjust employers that pay little, denigrate the worker, and then expect total compliance?

However, as British society collapses, more and more people like the idea of simply living off of the tax of the rich, not working for themselves and therefore Labour profit. Oh, letting in 2 million immigrant with no qualifications also helped to boost their voter-base.

wrong again- having lived on a council estate, and having gone to a school in an area surrounded by them, I am well aware that people dont like living off benefits. It's not a comfortable lifestyle at all. The problem is that when you have no jobs available beyond the skills and services sector, it does not bode well for people that don't have those skills. But to undermine the poor by saying they are happy to live off the rich is absolutely insulting to them- and this coming from an armchair warrior who hasn't had to deal with being poor, working ****ty jobs or having no opportunities.

I once heard a comparison between Sainsbury's and Tesco, and the Conservatives and Labour. Tesco forget quality in order to supply crap which is cheap and your "ordinary" person wants. Why sell food which is good, when you can just cater for the "populist" shopper. Sainsburys in the 90s tried to not lower themselves with crap quality and eventually suffered leadership to Tesco (although doing better now). I compare this with Conservative vs Labour policies. Right now Cameron has got to bow down to "populist" policies simply to appease the fact half of our population are now "dead-heads" who do not wish to work hard. They want rich bankers to be taxed because they are "bad". They want banks to be prevented from charging overdrawals because surely nobody should have to have responsibility to manage their bank account???

The argument is more than that. The banks manipulated people to create a property bubble. They traded toxic loans to make a cheap buck. They also had friends in the government that gave them generous tax levys and imposed rules that could price out their competitors, attaining an oligopoly in financial services that worked to serve the bankers- even when some banks were nationalised. Yet you blame the poor for the fall of society, RATHER than the gluttonous banks that are happy to use tax funds to pay for bonuses?

There is a trend- the stronger the Labour party has become, the weaker the UK has become. The Labour party are a trade union, they wish to ruin the country simply to allow their members to profit. The difference with the conservatives wanting to make their "members" profit is that when Conservative "members" (i.e. business) profits, everyone profits- the overall UK profits (Thatcher opening up the City of London in the 80s).

no, not everyone benefits. People rich enough to buy lots of shares benefit. People who have access to particular properties benefit. People with tax havens benefit too. Trickle down economics dosen't work as a mechanism for social justice, don't pretend it does.

When Labour "members" (e.g. single mums and immigrants) profit, the overall productivity of the country decreases. We end up with a social timebomb and more terrorists than afghanistan. Labour purposely tried to dilute the Conservative vote by opening the floodgates.

In order to make the UK strong again we need to kick out socialism and make a career working worth while. In other words, we need to deter living on benefits. At the moment this is more difficult because there are not as many jobs. However, if the Labour party had not spent billions, re-building schools which had a small crack in one wall, rebuilding hospitals to then close down perfectly good ones, making single mums more wealthy than two parents working and inviting every single Somalian terrorist to our country (and give them a paid-for house in Belgravia) we would have more money to invest in the young generation, through this difficult crisis.

One final small rant- pensioners are not victims. They had 50 years whereby jobs WERE easy to come by. They should not reach 65/70 and then turn around and say "oh I spent all my money, I now need a free TV licence, free bus pass, free care) etc. They lived during the golden years when jobs are easy to come by and houses were dirt cheap. They didn't prepare for the future- their mistake and short-sightedness. We cannot keep propping up every democratic group who thinks they can go through life making mistakes and they will be bailed out.

The difference between Labour and the Lib Dems is the former wish to destroy the UK on purpose, whereas the Lib Dems destroy the UK but they had the best intentions.

Im not even going to give the rest a response because it seems you became more and more ridiculous as you continued. Its like collecting all the spunk from daily mail comment boxes in one article.

(Original post by Kibalchich)
Housing benefit is an interesting one. Because of the shortage of council housing, due to Thatcher's right to buy policies, much more housing benefit goes to private landlords. So instead of housing benefit being paid by one arm of the state and going to another arm of the state, we have housing benefit (tax money, remember), going into private pockets. This is an example of how social costs end up as private profits. That's worth getting angry about.

Yep. It's not 'housing benefit' at all, it's a statist version of money laundering. They hand money £20bn p/a to wealthy landlords but channel it through poor workers/benefit claimants to give it a thin veneer of credibility. The irony of course is that a lot of this money is being handed to owners of ex council houses, we're paying private owners vast amounts of money to rent back assets we used to own anyway.

(Original post by chefdave)
Yep. It's not 'housing benefit' at all, it's a statist version of money laundering. They hand money £20bn p/a to wealthy landlords but channel it through poor workers/benefit claimants to give it a thin veneer of credibility. The irony of course is that a lot of this money is being handed to owners of ex council houses, we're paying private owners vast amounts of money to rent assets they used to own anyway.

For someone who was praising Thatcher in another thread, I'm surprised by this post.

(Original post by Kibalchich)
For someone who was praising Thatcher in another thread, I'm surprised by this post.

Thatcher totally failed when it came to economics and the housing market, while her aims were laudable: to give everybody a stake in society, she went about it in a reckless and shortsighted way. As mentioned above I do support the ideal of giving everybody a financial stake in the land market but I'd do it with a land value tax and accompanying citizen's dividend. Selling of chunks of council housing on the cheap just benefits the lucky few at the expense of everybody else. It's a short termist answer.

(Original post by izpenguin)
I really think that people who have children whilst on JSA should not receive more benefits. You should not be having children when you are on JSA.
We are paying lazy benefit scroungers to breed, and they are producing kids that will probably go on to do the same.

That's ludicrous. Majority of JSA recipients are looking for work, and benefit scroungers are probably getting an awful lot more than just JSA anyway.

(Original post by Quady)
Personally I'd say a deterioration in the UK would be based on lower living standards rather than immigration being higher and where executive power sits.

At what point do higher living standards not balance out for the things above?

Exactly... though people like the OP and chums will argue that Britain was better when it had an empire... better for whom I ask? Because, at that time, the vast majority of people in this country were living in slums and dying of diseases like cholera and typhoid at the age of 45...

(Original post by chefdave)
Well their biggest 'mistake' was allowing 600,000 Poles to enter the UK without any safeguards. When Maastricht was signed the EEC was comprised of only 12 mostly wealthy nations so free movement of people wasn't much of a problem.